Fun Fact #1: Gonguro Three Siblings was a group of four Gonguro at the time: Buriteri, Akokichi, Fumikko, and Yuka, making the alternate name Gonguro Three Siblings WithU. Fun Fact #2: The Buriteri cover issue above ranked the highest amount of sales for EGG Magazine with 500,000 copies sold.
From left to right: FUMI (ふみっこ) (三女, third daughter), ACO (あこ吉) (次女, second daughter), MARI (ブリテリ) (長女, eldest daughter), and Yuka (ゆうか) (with U)
Even after so many years have passed, the Three Gonguro Siblings With U are still close friends and can sometimes be seen on Yuka’s Instagram. Buriteri also belonged to ANGELEEK, the biggest and most respected Gal Circle at the time.
The Gonguro Three Siblings were the spark that ignited the first Gyaru boom in 1999. Buriteri specifically, was said to basically be the poster girl for Gonguro.
Unlike other GALmos, Buriteri never disclosed her name publicly in the same way that previous GALmos like Nicole Fujita or Tsubasa Masuwaka did. Instead, Buriteri’s name came from the jet black soy sauce that was used on yellowtail fish.
The rumor is that there was a girl that had created her own crazy style at the time in what was underground Shibuya (aka the pre-SNS times) with platform shoes that practically made her 6ft tall –– EGG immediately started looking for her. At this time, Buriteri and Yuka were already close friends.
Japan in the 90’s thrived on Black culture, to the point of fetishizing it. “Black style” became popular, especially within Gyaru when Gonguro boomed: it was a requirement to get extremely dark tans to be a part of the style, and even do much heavier tans and foundation application for Yamanba (a more extreme Gonguro substyle). Even before Gyaru, Japanese youth would darken themselves if they were heavily into hip hop (you can check this excerpt for more information–not Gyaru related; here’s another excerpt of the same study for the racial perceptions and its history between Japanese and African Americans).
Blackface in Japan dates back all the way to 1854 during a visit to Japan by American Commodore Matthew Perry, where minstrel shows were first introduced (you can read more about Minstrel Shows and their history here). To make a long story short, Japan thought this was a funny form of entertainment and didn’t exactly see the racism behind it. Instead, it became a sort of appreciation for African Americans, turned to fetishization, now seen as appropriation. To learn more about Japan and Racism, Vox wrote an interesting piece here.
In the last article, the piece ends with a thought that Japan is very tone deaf despite being a globalized society; This remains true for Gyaru, and there’s a very fine line between what’s right and wrong, especially for substyles that originated as far back as the late 90’s. Do Japanese Gyaru appreciate African American culture? Most definitely. Have they gone about this appreciation in the most politically correct way? Absolutely not.
Many Gyaru magazines even from the 2010’s have headlines with the word Black, which is used for edgy and darker styles rather than styles deriving from African American culture, and to this day Gonguro is practically a dead substyle or modified in a more racially-conscious manner where POC can attempt the style without going as overboard as resorting to Blackface; Proof that while its origin may be troubled, it doesn’t mean that it still is. The idea is to find a way where a substyle like this can be done without being offensive. To put it bluntly, if your foundation when doing Gonguro or similar styles doesn’t match the rest of your natural skin tone (with exception of moderate tanning), maybe it’s better to rethink doing it (image example from BLACK✩DIAMOND -from 2000-).
Fun Fact: BLACK✩DIAMOND coined the term Modern Ganguro (現代のガングロ, Gendai no Ganguro)
There are two theories about this: Gonguro is the original style which literally meant “Black Face”, and as the style evolved, it became known as Ganguro, a less dramatic version of the same. The other theory is that they’re both the same style but with a different way of spelling (you’ll notice 90’s Gals used Gonguro a lot more compared to 2000’s+ Gals that use Ganguro to talk about this style).
Sidenote, I posted a chronological history of Shibuya and Gyaru from its origins to 2014 which also mentions Gonguro (Gyaru History I – A Brief History into Gyaru & Shibuya up to 2014).
Did you know? According to Japanese forums, the Gonguro style derived as follows:
GONGURO ★ MANBA ★ YAMANBA ★ BANBA
Banba then went into the following substyles:
KOKONBA ★ ROMANBA ★ SERENBA